Night Train

by Thom Jones

  There were few spectators in the Pavilion. Vic led them to some front-row padded loge seats. The world’s number one heavyweight contender was in the ring working with a very fast light heavyweight. Although his size made him seem as ponderous as a water buffalo, Liston was in fact faster than the sparring partner. He worked on cutting off the ring, something he anticipated he would have to do with Patterson, who was lightning fast and a fine boxer as well. Time and again Liston trapped the light heavyweight along the ropes. Liston threw light punches and let him go, only to trap him again. After two rounds of this, a bigger man gloved up and got into the ring. A number of handlers in gray sweatshirts with “Sonny Liston” crudely stenciled on them bustled about. One of the men simply sat before a small phonograph and played “Nighttrain,” over and over again. Kid Dynamite sported two fresh black eyes incurred when his doctor had to rebreak his nose to set it right, and because of this as many people were looking at him as were watching Liston.

  At the first exchange, Liston knocked his new sparring partner down with a body shot. It didn’t look like much of a punch but the pain was very real. The boxer writhed about the canvas in agony. In the end he could not continue. Disgusted, and out of sparring partners, Liston climbed out of the ring and began banging the heavy bag. This went on for three timed rounds.

  As the workout ran down, Liston gave a rope-skipping exhibition on the solid maple floor of the depression-era dance hall. The record player continued to blare “Nighttrain” as Kid Dynamite looked about the sparse crowd. Most of them were reporters jotting notes on press pads. Kid Dynamite heard one of the trainers tell a Life magazine reporter that during training Liston ate nothing but rare steak, carrot juice, goat’s milk, and vegetables. He said Sonny Liston was the only private citizen in America to own a carrot juicer.

  Kid Dynamite was amazed at Liston’s speed and by the compactness and economy of his movements. After watching so many amateur fighters, this look at a professional heavyweight left him awestruck. Liston had a left jab that would decapitate anyone with less than a seventeen-inch neck. His display on the big bag was frightening, was light-years beyond what Kid Dynamite imagined possible. Vic gave him a nudge and said, “Bet the farm on this man. Patterson is dead.”

  Liston had surprisingly fast legs and was doing double crossovers with the skip rope. Kid Dynamite looked at the fighter’s feet, and when he looked back at Liston’s face, he discovered Liston’s baleful stare was locked in on him. Charles “Sonny” Liston was the most frightening person Kid Dynamite had ever seen, and at this moment Charles did not seem very happy. He met Liston’s gaze but found it almost impossible to sustain eye contact. Soon it became an exercise in the control of fear. Sonny Liston gave Kid Dynamite the slightest hint of a smile and winked. Vic nudged Kid Dynamite again, and leaned over, whispering, “Your eyes. He’s looking at your eyes.”

  Kid Dynamite had forgotten about his black eyes. Vic laughed and said, “I almost shit in my pants before I figured it out. That is one mean nigger.”

  As soon as the workout concluded, a handler tossed Sonny Liston a towel. He mopped off his face, which was glistening with Vaseline and crystal droplets of sweat. Another handler helped him into a terry-cloth robe. The towel man cut off Liston’s bandages. His hands were like hams. On his way to the shower, Liston stopped just short of Kid Dynamite to sign a few autographs. He paused briefly to talk with sports writers and then looked back at Kid Dynamite. He said, “What are you, kid, a lightweight?”

  Kid Dynamite jumped back as if he had been shot with a forty-five. His voice squeaked. “No sir, I’m a welterweight.”

  In a sissy voice, Liston said, “No sir, I’m a welterweight.”

  The writers roared and Kid Dynamite’s cheeks flushed. Sonny Liston motioned to one of the handlers, who handed him an 8 × 10 black-and-white glossy. He said, “What’s your name?”

  Kid Dynamite seemed dumbstruck. Finally he said, “Make it out to Melanie.”

  “I thought you was going to hem and haw forever.” Liston looked at Melanie. “Is that you?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Looks like you thumped him pretty good,” Liston said. There was another roar of laughter. A press photographer rushed over and staged a picture of Liston, Melanie, Vic, and Kid Dynamite. In the end, Liston had signed a picture for each of them. As soon as the fighter turned away and headed off to the shower, a man in a gray sweatshirt demanded two dollars each for the photographs. Vic paid gladly enough. “That was nice. He didn’t have to do that.”

  Giddy with excitement, they compared inscriptions. Kid Dynamite’s photo was signed, “To the Kid, from your friend, Sonny Liston.”

  Kid Dynamite beamed at the inscription like it was the writ of God. “Sonny Liston is a friend of mine,” he said.

  Kid Dynamite applied himself to boxing with renewed vigor. In the summer as he recovered from his nose surgery, he worked as a lifeguard at the city park. He would come in an hour early each day to swim. This was after he did a full morning workout in the garage. He bought a set of Joe Wielder weights. In the garage he did extra neck bridges and he lifted weights, then he ran to work and swam. For the rest of the day he rotated along the pool stations with the other lifeguards. Sitting in the hot sun in a white pith helmet, with a whistle in his mouth, he felt completely at rest.

  After work Kid Dynamite would meet Melanie at the Dairybar across the field from his house. Melanie served ice cream there in a blue-striped seersucker frock. One night after closing up, they sat outside under the blue bug zapper. Melanie was an only child and although, like Kid Dynamite, she was raised by a stepfather, she did not know her own father at all.

  “Maybe it’s just as well,” Kid Dynamite said. “Vic is really nice. My real father was nice, but he just wasn’t around much. He used to take me to the gym when I was a kid. He thought I was a sissy. Took me to Chicago where I met big-time fighters. Joe Louis, Ezzard Charles, Tony Zale, Ernie Terrell—guys who were his actual friends. I don’t know what I’ll do when it’s all over. I’m not good at anything.” Kid Dynamite poked a straw in a clump of ice cream at the bottom of his milk shake.

  Mikey had somehow patched up the mess with Cancer Frank. It seemed to Kid Dynamite that it was one of those rarest of occasions where he had managed to skate on something. Frank did not speak to him but neither did he criticize him. Kid Dynamite pretended that his stepfather was invisible and vice versa. Fortunately, their schedules did not converge that much. Kid Dynamite was up at four A.M. most days to run. On Monday morning he awoke with a pleasurable sense of anticipation. It would be the last run before the Reine fight. One more solid run and he would be ready. He had omitted nothing; if he lost it would be because Reine was the better fighter. On the edge of his bed, he clocked his resting pulse. Forty beats a minute.

  This time around Kid Dynamite wasn’t listening to any more of Juan’s bullshit advice. By now he felt he knew his body better than anyone. And while he rested, the other fighters would be playing catch-up. For them it would be too little, too late. Kid Dynamite got into his sweats and combat boots in the dark. He walked quietly downstairs and out the door, falling into an easy jog across town to his grandmother’s store. Since North Avenue was lit with orange tungsten streetlights, this was the route of choice; this was no time to sprain an ankle in a dark pothole.

  Kid Dynamite picked up speed after the first mile. The homes along the lower part of North Avenue were three-story Victorians. Only in a few could he see the amber glow of lightbulbs. It was early, but as he passed the Burlington railroad station, he spotted commuters scouting parking spots for the trip to Chicago. As he crossed the Fox River bridge, a squad car passed and a cop waved at him. Kid Dynamite ran past the gas company and a number of factories, most of which looked like chambers of Dickensian horror. He used to like looking in the windows and seeing men at work on the graveyard shift. He had come to recognize many of them. How they could stand in front of a machine, a spot welder or a punch press, n
ight after night was unfathomable to him. Did they suffer as he did in a high school classroom? Kid Dynamite knew that he might well end up in such a place himself. He did not deem himself college material, and he knew enough about boxing to know that his prospects as a professional were nil, just as they had been for his father. There was always someone bigger and better. Yet he was caught up into boxing and could think of little else. As he ran, the looks on the workers’ faces were neutral, reflecting neither agony nor pleasure. By the time Kid Dynamite got to Lake Street he was in a residential area again. Here the houses were not so nice. He came down the hill, passed under the viaduct, and sprinted the last two blocks to his grandmother’s store.

  Mag was standing at the cash register going through bills. A bare sixty-watt bulb hung on a frayed wire above her. For the past few years, Kid Dynamite came in to do all of the heavy lifting for her—moving bulk cases from the basement up to the shelves. Shuffling milk and pop bottles, sacks of flour, bags of potatoes. He loaded the stove with coal and then joined Mag in the kitchen, bolting down a couple of egg sandwiches with black coffee. He opened the cupboard where Mag always had a homemade pumpkin pie. Kid Dynamite sliced a piece and shoveled it in his mouth. Mag asked him if he needed any money, and Kid Dynamite shook his head no.

  The sun was coming up as he headed out, and as light flooded into the store, he saw that Mag had the “Kid Dynamite” article posted on the cash register for all her customers to see. On a shelf behind the counter she kept Kid Dynamite’s boxing pendants and trophies like a miniature shrine. He waved good-bye and headed out the front door. It was a four-mile run back to the house, most of it uphill. He sprinted the entire way.

  Of the four fighters the Steelworkers’ Boxing Club sent to the finals, Kid Dynamite was considered the most likely to win. And as the lightest fighter from the club, he was the first to go up. He hadn’t slept the night before the fight, but then he never did. As soon as Lolo taped his hands, Kid Dynamite began to shadowbox. After fifteen minutes of this, Juan forced him to sit down on a folding chair. The coach pulled a chair adjacent to him. “You know the game plan?”

  Kid Dynamite nodded. He was dripping with sweat.

  Juan looked at him intently. “Louie Reine had trouble making weight. Five hours in the steamroom, and three trips to the scales. Don’t make your move until the end of the second round. If he’s still strong then, wait until the third. Are you listening to me?”

  “The old man called me. He said I should jump all over him.”

  Juan, normally implacable, registered disbelief, “Your old man, who’s in a mental hospital two thousand miles away, told you this?”

  “Yeah,” Kid Dynamite said.

  “Well, what do you think you should do?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Juan. I’m going to win tonight. I can feel it. I don’t care what he does; I’m going to kick his motherfucking ass. I’ve been waiting a year to get this cocksucker.”

  “So you’re going to do a job on him? No plan, no nothing! Just kick ass!” Juan shook his head in dismay. “Well, I hope you do. Just remember, the crowd will be with him tonight. It won’t be your crowd.”

  Kid Dynamite got up and started twisting his neck from side to side, bouncing up and down. Lolo ducked into the locker room. He grabbed the spit bucket and water bottle. “Let’s go, Kid, you’re up.”

  Kid Dynamite entered the arena and climbed up the portable wooden steps to the ring. Louis Reine was already in the opposite corner, his red hair shorn in a buzz cut. There wasn’t a drop of sweat on him. He looked the same as he had the year before. Kid Dynamite turned away, bracing his gloves against the ropes as he rubbed his shoes in the resin box. He flexed his neck and bounced up and down in his corner trying to shake off the butterflies. The referee called both fighters to the center of the ring, reminded both fighters that they had received their instructions in the dressing room, and wished them both luck.

  Kid Dynamite returned to his corner, where Lolo held out his mouthpiece. He set his teeth in it, clamping down hard as he slapped himself on the forehead a few times to make sure his headgear was tight. Then he turned and looked across the ring with a blank stare as he waited for the bell. As soon as it rang, Louie Reine came rushing across the ring to engage, and Kid Dynamite did the same. Just before contact Kid Dynamite spotted his grandmother, Mag, the Driver, Mikey, and Cancer Frank seated in the third row next to Melanie and Vic. The only time in his life that Kid Dynamite could remember Mag leaving the store for more than an hour was the day she had her teeth pulled. The store was open seven days a week including Christmas Day. It had always been that way. He was so shocked to see her out of context he had to look twice to make sure he was seeing things right.

  Reine gave him a Walcott stepover to switch angles, and threw a left hook that just barely grazed the top of his head. Kid Dynamite heard it whistle as he ducked under it and watched Reine’s elbow sail by. He came up off balance and started a left hook of his own, aimed over Reine’s right hand. Reine’s punch landed first, catching Kid Dynamite high on the forehead. Because his feet were too close together, and because Reine was so strong, the force of the punch was sufficient to send Kid Dynamite reeling backward into the ropes. Reine then tagged him with a double jab and a straight right hand to the side of the jaw, and suddenly Kid Dynamite was sprawled facedown on the canvas. It seemed that the floor had flown up and hit him in the mouth. His whole body bounced hard. The canvas was as rough as concrete, and his face, elbows, and knees stung with abrasions. He had gone down like he was poleaxed, and the crowd went into a frenzy. Knockdowns, at least spectacular ones, were relatively rare in amateur boxing. The boxing reporter from the Sun-Times, the prophet who picked Reine to go to the Nationals, was on his feet scribbling in his notebook. It was the first thing Kid Dynamite saw as he raised his head.

  His face burned. Pinwheels spun behind his eyelids, and he shook his head hard. Looking over to his corner he saw Juan frantically motioning him to stay down and take the full eight count. Meanwhile, the referee was having a problem getting Reine to a neutral corner. Kid Dynamite distinctly saw a smile flash across Cancer Frank’s face. Mag was on her feet screaming in German for him to get up. Never in his life had he heard her speak in her native tongue. Her face was red and she was pounding her cane on the floor like a savage. Kid Dynamite felt he was in a dream. Reine’s corner was furiously shouting instructions, but Reine wasn’t listening. His chest was puffed up and he looked supremely confident. Kid Dynamite shook his head again, trying to clear out the cobwebs. The noise of the crowd seemed very far away. He managed to get his right glove up on the lower ring rope.

  Off in the seventh row Kid Dynamite focused on a big man with a fleshy bulbous nose and frosty white hair. He watched him raise his hands to his mouth and shout encouragement to Reine. For such a big man, the sound Kid Dynamite heard was diminutive, but he could hear the man’s harsh South Chicago accent. Kid Dynamite wondered if his eardrum had been broken. The man continued to scream. He was well built, and wearing a plaid flannel shirt. Kid Dynamite noticed that the threads on the man’s second shirt button had unraveled into tan and brown sprouts, and he thought, “Mister, take that shirt off and put it on three more times, and the button is gone.” Kid Dynamite wanted to go down into the crowd and warn him. For the man to lose his button seemed like a cosmic tragedy.

  The referee picked up the count from the timekeeper. He was looking in Kid Dynamite’s eyes. “Five…six,” he cried. The smile on Cancer Frank’s face widened. Melanie had her face buried in her hands. Vic was on his feet shaking his fist in the air. Vic had a heavy beard and always seemed in need of a shave. Kid Dynamite was certain he could smell English Leather coming off of Vic. He could see the fine black hairs on the backs of Vic’s fingers. Next to Vic he could see the redness in Mag’s face. Her skin thinned to parchment with age. She was dressed in a thick gray overcoat and pearl pop beads. Kid Dynamite had given them to her because her arthritis made ordinary clasps impossible
. A six-dollar purchase. From directly behind, he heard a fan’s disembodied voice say, “Don’t worry, this kid is tough. He’ll get up.”

  Time began to hurtle along again. He got up on one knee and shook his head. Goddammit if something wasn’t wrong with his eardrum.

  The referee cried, “Seven.” Melanie lifted her head from her lap. “Eight!” the referee cried. Kid Dynamite was standing. The referee looked in his eyes and rubbed Kid Dynamite’s gloves clean. “You okay?” Kid Dynamite nodded. His legs felt full of Novocain. The referee stepped back and signaled for the fight to continue.

  Reine marched across the ring in a straight line. He gave the kid a real cool dip and roll, feigning a left as he fired his best punch, the straight right. Kid Dynamite anticipated this, and with the overconfident Reine walking in, he countered with a picture-perfect left hook to the point of Reine’s chin. It was the best punch Kid Dynamite had ever thrown, but Reine did not go down. It was no reason for discouragement. Reine had not gone down, Kid Dynamite knew, because Reine still had hope. His job now was to erase it. He set about to do this, busily circling Reine, setting his body, and throwing punches in combination. Reine wobbled but didn’t go down. The cheers of the crowd fueled Kid Dynamite’s enthusiasm, but he kept his head and fought carefully. By the end of the round a frustrated Reine bulled forward, punching recklessly with both hands. Kid Dynamite returned to his corner rubbing blood out of his left eye. Juan didn’t even bother with the mouthpiece, he was too busy pressing adrenaline swabs in the cut.

  During the next round Kid Dynamite withstood an onslaught of sharp combinations. He methodically outboxed Reine, who began to tire and lose his composure. As Reine started throwing desperate punches, Kid Dynamite found a home for his right uppercut. By the end of the round, Reine’s fair skin was marked with red welts. In the corner Juan encouraged him to go after Reine with both hands, but Kid Dynamite was exhausted as well. His lungs felt scalded by the smoke in the arena. His legs seemed as if they had never recovered from the knockdown. Juan told him Reine might have twenty seconds of gas left over after the minute’s rest, to lay back and let him throw his bolt. But Reine had no gas at all. He came out arm weary and Kid Dynamite was there to pepper him with left hands. Then he moved inside, confident of his ability to slip Reine’s punches. He straightened Reine with the right-hand uppercut and then threw a left-right combination, dishing out all of his mustard. It turned Reine sideways, but it did not knock him down. Reine pulled his gloves up and used his huge forearms to ward off further punishment. It was tantamount to giving up, since Reine did not mount another offensive rally. Kid Dynamite moved in and out, working his jab until the bell sounded ending the fight.